


We'll Fight Monsters Together

by Esmethewitch



Series: Quests, Questions, & Mistakes [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Fictional Religion & Theology, Force-Sensitive Rose, Gen, Hays Minor Culture, Hopeful Ending, Non-Jedi Force Users, Prophetic Visions, Sad, Sister-Sister Relationship, Storytelling, Worldbuilding, canon character death, mentoring, probably non-canon backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17504153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” -G.K. ChestertonPaige tells her little sister stories, as their home world is torn apart by war. She hopes they are good , and that her efforts are not in vain. Because this Galaxy needs people to become the next generation of heroes, and Paige and Rose Tico might as well try. No matter what it may cost them.





	1. Long Ago and Far Away

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, two sisters lived with their great-aunt in a mining town that sat just outside the border of a great forest. The forest they were told never to enter, for in olden times it was a place of death and rebirth. There, holy men and women would take stone knives and give those chosen to live on for thousands of years to the strong, green-barked Otorini cedar trees, the biggest things to grow on Hays Minor. That was well and good for the heroes of long ago, but not for little girls too young to leave home. Still, the dark path with its swirling, glowing mists and the ancient, brave souls that inhabited the trees called to both children. When they walked to the border of their town, the older girl would boost her little sister onto a crumbling piece of old wall, and they squinted at the blurry tree line that faced the city like a standing army. “It’s a place where people went to become heroes, and the heroes would return there when they were ready to die if they were truly valiant,” the older child told her charge. “We’re going to go there someday and become heroes. We’ll get the blessing of the Souls and we’ll fight monsters together. The old stories will continue with us.” It was a grand promise, but the chubby-cheeked little girl believed they would do it, when they were both properly grown up. Like twelve or something. Paige kept her promises.

Their parents were long dead, but their great-aunt was a kind old woman who loved them both dearly and raised them as her own. The girls and their guardian wore simple clothes and ate plain fare, but in the beginning, they were happy enough. Paige was the eldest, outgoing and daring. Strangers were puzzles to be solved and stories to hear; potential friends she hadn’t met yet. She dreamed of becoming a brave warrior someday. She was sad that the days of the spear and shield were over; the epic old tools of protection and conquest were replaced by blasters. But there was a certain nobility in fighter ships, sleek and swift. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said “pilot.” After all, there were no training programs or employment ads for “heroine” anymore. Leaving home behind with only dreams and a little sack of clothes and bread to seek one’s fortune was frowned upon these days and dismissed as “reckless”, “dangerous”, and “a shame to your family”.

Her younger sister, Rose, was shy of new faces and crowds. Strangers were people she didn’t look in the eye and kept away from, potential dangers that hadn’t hurt her yet. She dreamed of reading in quiet libraries, of using mathematics to build devices that would keep people safe and make the trains arrive on time. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she only said “engineer” at first because too many people told her that “witch” wasn’t an option. “Engineer” sounded like the next best thing. And it was better because she could make money engineering and spend that on a cottage with an herb garden and a cat, seeking dragons to slay and orphans to rescue on weekends. Despite their difference in personality, the girls were never apart except for lessons at school. Paige dragged Rose out of her books to play with her friends, and Rose grabbed Paige’s arm and steered her to shelter with a finger on her lips when they met newcomers who weren’t entirely friendly. They were as alike as day and night, but what was the dawn without the long stretch of star-speckled darkness before it, the hours of silence but for the wind in the branches? What would the dusk be without the final flames of the setting sun painting the sky and the birds ending their songs? Together they grew and learned, and together they would set out to build a life of near-escapes and good deeds.

Sadly, the sisters’ dreams of quests and glory were interrupted. Well, Rose would have said “interrupted”. Paige would have said the strife in their planet and town called them to their journey. A real wizard, (the adults didn’t call him a wizard, they called him a “Force-user”, an “enigma backing a jumped-up collection of geriatric Imperials who don’t have the good sense to know when they’re beaten”, but Paige knew better. She could translate the nervous waffling of the news holos and caf-house gossip to the truth. He was a most wicked wizard, one who used powers unknown to all but himself to gain power but turn from a humanoid being to an abomination. She’d heard enough stories by then to recognize a wizard by his reputation), the cruelest example of his kind had his sights set on galactic domination. On bleeding out Hays Minor’s veins of ore to create new machines that spit out fire and death upon untold billions. Grown-ups said that the days of wizards, knights, and dragons were long over, if they ever happened at all. Paige Tico saw through their lies and told her little sister so. The heroes and villains of fairy tales didn’t die or fade away. They had all just gotten better at disguises, and were hiding among the people of the Galaxy at that very moment. In places they would be least expected. Soon, war came to Hays Minor and the mining town beside the forest.

“It’s not a war, it’s a curse,” Paige explained the first time they huddled in the basement trying not to flinch at the bombs exploding overhead. “A really powerful curse that can drive entire armies and star systems mad.”

Auntie Vi was out that evening, carrying messages, patrolling the streets, and helping the wounded. Their Auntie was secretly a brave warrior of old and she could transform herself too, changing from a terrifying beast that spat blaster bolts back to the Auntie the children knew and loved. She’d learned how to change herself during the first war she fought in, long ago. Otosni, the sisters’ homeland, fought against the southern nation of Kukiri and the Eastern Union of little agrarian republics that the city-dwelling Otosnians rudely called “the Tuber Bloc”. The war ostensibly started over mineral rights but was really about the limits of expansionist policy. According to the history books. According to Paige it was a war that ground to a halt when an Empress, a Prime Minister, and a General saw the destruction their own greed had wrought and wept together. Diplomacy had prevailed in the end, but before the important words were said and the relevant documents were signed in the ancient Palace of Winds, Auntie Vi lost her husband and gained quite a few scars. And the ability to shapeshift. But the changes Auntie made to herself cost a lot and hurt. “Everything has a price,” Paige told Rose when she asked why the old woman would come home clearly distressed sometimes and lock herself in her room for hours. “She can go from one form to another, but she has to think about it. And it doesn’t feel good when she thinks about it.”

Rose was skeptical about their great-aunt’s supposed abilities. “I’ve seen her fight, and I’ve never noticed her magically transforming. What does she do, grow invisible spines?”

Paige sighed. “No, Rosie, it’s all in her head. Part of her is the Auntie Vi we know, and the other part is the person she taught herself to be in the first war.”

“Oh.” She didn’t truly understand until much later.

The girls would spend many nights together in each other’s arms, listening to the crump of the bombs and the whine of blaster shots that were too high-pitched and cheerful sounding for what they were, trembling when the foundation of their house shook. In the dark basement, Paige told her sister stories. She recounted the tale of a brave Princess who slayed a cruel Hutt with the chain that bound her to him, circling around his massive girth in the dead of night like a tiny moon orbiting a gas giant, wrapping the gilded links around his neck and pulling until orange flesh turned to purple. Rose liked that one, so Paige decided to tell more second-hand stories, many of the outlines gleaned from Auntie’s Resistance fighter buddies who popped into their house for tea but kept their stays carefully short. Rose didn’t like the story about the little sapient beings that looked like fuzzy bears and ate people, even stormtroopers, cracking open their white shells with stone mallets to get at the flesh inside. They hid in small places and jumped out to their prey, visiting compressed rage upon their enemies. “And they live in forests that look almost exactly like our Forest of Souls, only the trees have red bark instead of green. For all we know, there could be some of them around here,” she concluded. Rose said it sounded far-fetched and ridiculous in a squeaky voice. Paige thought she went too far with scaring her sister that night. Rose didn’t sleep, hands clenched on the blankets. For weeks afterwards, Rose would jump back when she opened a cupboard or closet, a frying pan in hand. Auntie Vi noticed and broached the topic one afternoon while the youngest Tico was staying after school for tutoring.

“I am grateful that you entertain your sister so well, but some of your stories even terrify _me._ Roes doesn’t need anything else to worry about these days. The real world is enough.”

“Yeah, the story about the bears was a bit much,” Paige replied. “But we need scary stories about monsters. If we can’t deal with the made-up ones that other people got, we’ll never defeat the real ones that are still alive. When Rose and I grow up, we’ll fight monsters together.” She grinned and shone with the conviction only a child could have. Vi Tico scooped up her great-niece in a hug and wondered how children could be at once so clueless and wise.

The bombing runs continued. Paige kept telling stories about monsters. Rose liked her sagas about dragons the best. Dragons were magma-spitting beasts that lived in the mantle of the planet. Their skins were as hard as stone, their eyes glowing like embers. On each of their six feet, they had sharp claws of obsidian. They made their homes in caves and tunnels, constantly expanding their lairs because they could eat metallic ores, breathing flames to smelt it out, lapping it up with their burning tongues. They did not need to eat human flesh, but they did find the iron in blood exquisitely tasty and would crunch up people when they could find them in mining tunnels, taking the same pleasure from such an act that the average person would find in a good breath mint. They hoarded the best pieces of carved wood they could find; the daily struggle to prevent the incineration of their treasures was viewed as an exercise in polite restraint and the more varnished and intricately carved pieces a dragon had pilfered from humans and decorated their cave with, the higher the dragon’s standing in polite society. Metal was food and would, in their view spoil if left out overlong. When the dragons fought their own battles for treasure and territory underground, the earth shook, and new mountains rose from their struggles. They could fly if hard-pressed, shooting up like magma into the air. But they were heavy, so they could not stay up for very long, and they flapped at a lumbering pace, trailing molten rock. These factors made it easy for any respectable Hero armed with a small ship and a standard set of explosive ordinances to shell the dragon, aiming for the flame chamber in its gullet, a stomach-like organ that digested rocks where chemicals bubbled and fire brewed. When the flame chamber was ruptured, the dragon would burn to death from the inside. After Paige finished her story about a band of poor but dauntless dragon slayers, a First Order dreadnought rumbled above them.

“Is that a dragon?” Rose asked, still a bit afraid from the aftershock of the story. It was a good tale; most of the dragon slayers lived and went home to glory. The ones who didn’t were burned on a pyre with the dragon’s hoard. Paige’s technique had greatly improved. Tonight’s new story oozed with the distinct possibility of Evil prevailing this time. But the dragon slayers won, and the behemoth that terrorized the mountain mining villages was dead.

Paige smiled. She knew she’d done a good job tonight. “Yes, from a certain point of view,” she said. “But what have you learned about dragons tonight?”

“They are long-lived but not immortal. They can be killed.”

“That’s right. They can fall to the likes of us.”

Paige thought about what story to tell her sister tomorrow night while Rose drifted off to sleep and dreamed of a fire in a dark forest, sparks showering down on the canopy and blooming into flame.


	2. There Were Two Sisters

Time passed. Rose grew taller, though not as tall as she’d hoped. Paige was growing breasts. The supply of food in the marketplace withered away. Talk at the local caf-shops stopped when the door opened, the room taking the newcomer’s measure before deciding whether or not it was safe to continue speaking. People began to disappear, people they knew. The parents of Rose’s friend Janica were first to go. Auntie Vi found a friend of hers to take the tiny, blonde girl in. Rose wanted Janica to stay with them and got angry when she was told no.

“It’s because her parents came here from the Eastern Union, isn’t it?”, she accused. “Their grandparents probably weren’t even in the same province as you during the war, Auntie. Janica has done nothing wrong, and if she doesn’t have anywhere to go, she’ll get hurt.”

Auntie Vi sighed. “Her heritage isn’t the issue, Rose. It’s why her parents disappeared and who we are. The First Order knows—or strongly suspects that Janica’s mother and father were in the Resistance. They would like to get me too for all my miner’s union work, but they don’t have anything they can make stick yet. How do you think it would look if a family of suspected Resistance-sympathizers took in the child of a couple that was abducted for _definitely_ holding pro-Resistance sentiments and providing aid and comfort to ‘the enemy’? She’s safer with Mr. and Mrs. Tamin. They think like we do, but they are quite careful and discreet. Neither of them was an Army veteran like I was, so they are held to a much lower level of scrutiny to begin with. You can still talk to her at school, and I promise that she’ll be safe with them.”

“But we can’t visit her?”

“No, you can’t visit her at her new home. I’m sorry. I don’t want to break up your friendship, but Paige has a reputation already. Three people informed me that she approached them about joining the Resistance. They all told her that she’s too young at thirteen. Those three are all on the level with me, but I worry about who else she might have talked to. I am pretending that I don’t know about the target practice sessions you two have in the back alleyway.” Rose blushed. She thought they were being properly secretive. She even made a silencer for the blaster and it worked. “You can’t hide all those blaster marks, Rosie. And I know that there haven’t been any firefights in this neighborhood.” She shook her head. “I didn’t raise my children to be soldiers. I wanted better for them. Now my grandchildren and my brother’s grandchildren are preparing for war anyway. There’s not much of a choice anymore.”

That night when Paige came into Rose’s room to tell a story (there were no bombing raids that night), Rose had a different idea.

“We can’t wait until we grow up to become heroes, Paige. We need to start now. Things are already bad enough. Auntie Vi said the First Order Intelligence officers took Janica’s parents away.”

“Rosie, we can’t break into a First Order base and rescue them. Not without help. And I’ve talked to people about joining the Resistance and they laughed at me and told me to go home. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I didn’t mean rescuing them. They’re gone. I meant becoming heroes. For real.”

Paige slowly grinned. “You mean we should go to the Forest?”

“If that’s the best way to do it, then yes. The grown-ups won’t help us change things, but maybe the Souls will.” So, it began. The sisters plotted and schemed, but they could do nothing until Auntie Vi took them out on a “vacation” in the countryside. To them, such a trip was obviously a front for a meeting with one of their great-aunt’s informants.

It was easier to hide in the network of tangled briars and trees than in the city with its packs of prowling First Order officers and requirement of ID scanners to access any mode of transit or lodging. Naturally, there was a booming black market in false identification cards, but the scanning technology kept improving. And being caught with a fake ID could lead to unpleasant consequences in little rooms.

The night Auntie Vi left their rented cottage, the girls jumped into action. This was their first real quest, after all. They put on warm clothes, laced up their boots, and armed themselves with a blaster. All of these things would be useless inside the borders of the Forest. No metal was permitted, and their coats had metal zippers.  
The girls crept along the dirt road, stumbling in the darkness. A murder of hunting Nightcrows screamed as they flew by. It was likely that they were heading towards a flock of geese, separating and divebombing a weak or young bird and tearing into it with their claws and serrated beaks like a squadron of X-Wing fighters attacking a dreadnought. Or they’d caught a whiff of a school of stream-squids, spent and washed up like fishy, tentacled noodles on a pebbled bank after the frenzy of their breeding season. Rose could smell the dead school, and her nose wrinkled. Nightcrows weren’t picky. There was no way they were after a pair of children, one of which carried a blaster. Rose knew this. However, some part of her brain insisted those big eyes like bottomless mining shafts that she’d seen in pictures were watching them, and if she listened carefully, she thought she could hear the flap of wings. “I can’t see a thing, Paige,” Rose whined. “We should go back. I feel like we’ll disappear in the night.”

Paige laughed. “Heroes aren’t scared of the dark. Besides, it’s not as dark as you think. Look up, Rosie.” Obediently, she did. The stars glittered down at them. “That patch of light is the cluster they call the Net of Pearls. We can see everything out here!” Rose took her sister’s hand and they stood together, looking up at the Galaxy spread out above them.

“The Resistance is out there,” Rose said. “I don’t mean the miner’s unions and our saboteurs, I mean the proper Resistance. With their own fleet and General Organa.”  
“I know, Rosie. We’ll join them someday.” Paige gave her hand a little squeeze. “But for now, we’ll see the stars and our Forest. That’s a good place to start.”

As they neared the Forest of Souls, mists oozed around them, covering the track and skimming the tips of the grasses that grew by the roadside. They glowed with a green light, inhabited by hardy bioluminescent bacteria. The microscopic organisms were luxuriating in the humid warmth of the planet’s surface and the high concentration of oxygen, taking in nutrients from the air and breeding. Rose had only ever read about them. She forgot to breathe for a few minutes as the glowing tendrils swirled around them. Other things darted through the glowing clouds and sparkled in their light.  
“Featherbugs,” Paige whispered, and Rose could see them too, their golden carapaces shining in the light of the mists. Their wings whirred. They were after the bacteria, flying through clouds of mist to get them. Their hairy legs caught the bacteria, and the bugs would lick them off later while resting on a tree trunk. The sisters kept walking but slowed their pace. Gradually, trees appeared on the side of the road, in pairs. There were always at least two Otorini cedars; their weak roots needed to intertwine with those of another tree or they would crash down in the first windstorm.

The road ended in a meadow. On the other side of the meadow were two standing stones, guarding the Forest. “It’s like a doorway,” Paige marveled.

“No, it’s like a pair of fangs in a mouth,” Rose replied. “I’m not scared though.” They marched through the meadow, the wet grasses painting the fabric of their pants and chilling them. Before they reached the standing stones, they unzipped their jackets, removed their boots and socks, and placed the blaster on top of the pile.

They linked hands again. “Let’s see what the Souls have in store for us,” Paige said. They went through the standing stones. It was then that Paige reconsidered their plan. She knew some old stories about this place cautioned against entering with a group at night. According to some, the Forest would favor one person over another, gifting or burdening their chosen one with a flood of visions and supposedly cursing the spare. Other stories said it was safer to go in a group, that if you went alone, you’d be helpless against the voices from the past telling you your future and that sheer terror could make some people crack. The Forest of Souls also killed people sometimes. But if you were brave enough to get through the Forest, you were brave enough to do anything.

They were silent for a while, listening for the voices of the Souls from the trees. Paige heard nothing. Rose was frowning, then her expression turned to a beatific grin. “I hear them, Paige! They’re talking to me!”

“Can’t hear a thing,” Paige mumbled. “We ought to go back, Auntie might be done by now…” Rose wasn’t listening. She let go of Paige’s hand and darted over to a tree, wrapping her arms around it. “Don’t touch it!” Paige screamed, too late. Rose’s expression was sometimes rapturous, sometimes sad. After a few minutes, Rose stumbled to another tree and slumped against it.

“So beautiful,” Rose whispered. “’m gonna stay here forever, Paige.” Her shy younger sister thrashed through the brambles that crept over the ground and lay down on a clear patch of moss.

“Rose?” Paige was frightened now. She didn’t hear the voices Rose heard, but there was some presence here. If she listened hard, she thought she could hear whispers: _Ours, always ours, take her back into the earth so no one can ever hurt her…_ She shivered from more than just the cold night. Condensation beaded on Rose’s body, some droplets still containing bacteria and glowing like tiny stars against her black hair.

“Rose, we need to leave! NOW!”

“I can’t leave, Paige. If I stay here, you might live. Or I won’t have to watch you die twice.”

“I might live…”

“You die, Paige! You burn to death like one of the dragon-hunters you told me about. Our planet burns and dies too. Please leave me here.” Rose opened her eyes, and they glowed with green light, matching the mists.

Paige shook her head. “You’re my sister. Only cowards leave their sister behind. We’re heroes now and we must follow higher standards than everybody else. To do otherwise would be a disgrace.” She grabbed Rose’s wrists and yanked her up from her bed of moss. Rose struggled and cried. Paige had to drag her down the path out of the Forest. Her struggles gradually tapered off, and she grew worried. Rose’s skin was icy cold. Paige put her socks and boots back on, both now damp with dew, and holstered the blaster. After brief consideration, she left off the jacket. She laid Rose down and crammed her little feet in her shoes. She dressed Rose in layers; Rose’s jacket and Paige’s. She lifted her up and staggered back to the road. She shook her now and then. “Wake up, Rosie. I can’t carry you all the way back, you’re too heavy.” Rose didn’t seem to hear her.

And so it happened that Auntie Vi came face to face with Paige and the unconscious Rose on the stretch of road in front of the row of rental cottages. Auntie Vi inspected the scratches on Rose’s legs and looked at Paige with accusation in her eyes. _You were supposed to protect your little sister._

Paige started crying. She knew all the stories and their contradictory horrors, but she took Rose there anyway. “Let’s get inside,” Auntie Vi said. “It is not good for her to be out here.”

Together, they hauled poor little Rose inside the cottage, and Auntie Vi set her down on one of the beds and wrapped her in a blanket. “Rosie? Can you hear me? If you can hear, nod.”

Rose nodded, and blinked. Her eyes glowed with that frightening green light again. “Kriff”, Paige whispered. Auntie Vi’s lower lip trembled, and she grabbed her comm and called the nearest clinic.

“Yes, my great-niece went into the Forest. With her sister. She’s largely unresponsive. Her eyes are…” Auntie Vi gathered herself after a brief struggle. “Her eyes don’t look good.” She nodded. “Yes, we’re keeping her warm, but she seems so cold.”

Paige went over to her sister and held her hands, trying to forget that Auntie Vi sounded scared as she talked with the doctor. They were icy. She rubbed them. “Come back, Rose,” she whispered. “I love you and I don’t think I can go adventuring alone.”

“I wanna come back,” Rose slurred. “Just not sure I can though. Everything is too loud and bright here.” Paige glanced around the room. The only light came from the dim lamp on the bedside table.

“What are you seeing right now? How is it loud and bright?”

“Flames,” Rose whispered. “ ‘splosions. Fighters, TIES and X-wings. Some girl with a lightsaber. She’s pretty. I see other people too. Some of them are nice and some of them aren’t.” She started crying. “Some of the people I see are dead. There’s the Death Star again; I guess some people rebuild it. And they use it on more planets. There’s nothing I can do!” Her sobs gave way to a disturbing quiet. Rose’s eyes closed.

“Auntie!” Auntie Vi rushed over to them and held Rose in her arms.

“Wake up, Rosie,” she ordered. “You’re strong. You’re brave. You will get through this.” She stroked Rose’s hair with her gnarled hands.

The doctor came. He backed away when Rose opened her eyes and called a speeder-ambulance. “She’s going into shock,” he said. Paige and Auntie Vi rode along with a limp Rose, now attached to an IV. The following two weeks of hospitalization were a blur for Paige. A friend of Auntie’s had driven them back to retrieve their speeder, but nobody talked during the ride. Paige missed her sister. The hospital only allowed them to visit Rose once a day, for a brief period.

“She’s susceptible to over-stimulation,” the medical specialist explained to them, back in town. “All of her senses are heightened right now because of her…exposure to things in the Forest. Hallucinations are common at this stage, and she has reported some of those. But medication for them usually does more harm than good, and most importantly, she’ll recover soon. We’ll gradually increase her exposure to visual and auditory stimuli, and then she’ll go home. If you wish to have a priest visit and perform the blessings, we can arrange that too.”

Paige glared at the physician. Locking Rose in a dark room sounded like a way to harm her, not cure her. But it was her fault, in a way. She hurt her sister. The Forest led to this. Auntie Vi said yes to seeing the priest. Paige gulped.

On the afternoon of the priest’s visit, Paige sat with her Auntie in the waiting room. The chair was hard. She drummed against the linoleum floor with the heel of her boot. Auntie Vi tolerated this for a few minutes, then told her to stop. She switched to tapping her fingers against the thin plastic armrests.

The priest arrived. He was a man old enough to be her father, head shaved bare, dressed in robes of a sober dark green. A pendant of Haysian Smelt hung on his neck. After talking with the receptionist, he stopped in front of Paige.

“Are you Rose’s sister, child?”, he asked.  
_Don’t call me child,_ Paige thought. But Auntie Vi had raised her to have good manners. “Yes. My name’s Paige. What is yours?”

The priest smiled. “Brother Sando. Were you in the Forest when your sister was Called, Paige?”

Auntie Vi spoke quickly. “She was.”

“I was,” Paige added, slightly irritated with her great-aunt.

“I see,” Brother Sando mused. “In that case, you should be there for the blessing. It is typical for the ceremony to take place with only one family member besides the initiate. I was told that Rose requested your presence as well. Are you both comfortable with that, and do you have any questions before we begin?”

Paige had only seen the ceremony depicted in old paintings, though she was aware that it still happened, even in the modern day. The scenes were all the same; a priest with a pair of necklaces joined together, the initiate either kneeling or laid out on a bier, next to someone else. The other person was sometimes a parent, sometimes a spouse or lover, always weeping. They were set just outside the borders of the Forest, though. Never in a hospital. She had an idea of what it meant. She knew the words that would be said; she read them in stories, had heard them repeated in historical-period holodramas. It sealed their fate as Proper Heroes, in her books. One lingering question remained.

“Are you going to take Rose away?”, she blurted. Her lip trembled, and she bit it to make it stop.

He laughed. “No. That’s not been done for centuries. Now, we say that the initiate serves the Forest, and by extension all living beings in their own way. If she does want to join the priesthood, we will encourage that, but she’s not allowed to go to seminary until she’s eighteen at least. We prefer people to start at age twenty or older, in fact.”

Paige breathed deep. “Alright. I can do it. If Auntie’s okay with it.”

Auntie Vi put a hand on her shoulder. “It is a big responsibility. You swear an oath, and it’s binding. Swearing to protect someone and supervise their spiritual development as you are able and keeping that oath is a lot to take on.”

“I can do it. I will do it.” After all, it was what she’d already been doing from the moment Rose was born. She stood up. Auntie Vi hugged her, her silver hair brushing over Paige’s face.

“I’m sure you’ll do it well,” she said. Her wrinkled face shone with tears and pride.

Paige followed Brother Sando into the perpetual twilight of Rose’s hospital room. Her sister gave her a weak wave and smiled. She looked better than she’d been. The dark circles under her eyes had lightened, and she was no longer tethered to an IV. Paige was struck by an odd sense of peace. She knew what to do. She knelt by her sister’s side. Brother Sando took out the matching pendants of Haysian Smelt (a disk of metal in two parts, with two separate chains, fitted together for now), cleared his throat, and began.

“The Earth gives us ore and life, and in return, we give it ourselves, as is good and right. The Soul-Trees and Elder Souls, those righteous enough to live on and provide guidance, to strengthen the frail have called you, Rose Tico. Do you choose to go with them?”

“Yes, I do”, Rose breathed. She meant it.

“But before one can return to the land from which we all came, one must live well, serving the good of others, protecting the land and its people. Do you swear by all the Trees and the Souls to commit yourself to a righteous life, Rose?” There was some tension in the air by this point; there was the slim possibility that Rose could say no.

“By all the Trees and all the Souls, I pledge myself to righteousness,” she replied as was traditional.

“Yet, as one Otorini cedar will fall if it stands alone, we all must have someone to guide us, to set our feet back on the path when we err, to lift us up when we stumble. Do you, Paige Tico, swear by all the Trees and Souls to commit yourself to a righteous life and the path of Rose? Will you guard and guide her so she may grow, and accomplish feats pleasing to the Earth and the Souls?”

Paige trembled, but she said it anyway: “By all the Trees and all the Souls, I pledge myself to righteousness. With my every breath, I will protect and guide Rose so she may grow and one day return to the Forest.”

Brother Sando lifted up the pendant-disk, raised it above his head, and separated the necklaces. “So say you both, and so will you, as long as you live. May the strength of life in the Forest and everywhere be with you.” He first put the necklace on Rose, then its corresponding half on Paige. Rose reached out and grabbed Paige’s hand. That wasn’t part of the ceremony, but it needed to be done anyway. The priest mentioned that it would be advisable for Rose to meditate and said that he would tell Auntie Vi about possible times for Rose to visit the local temple for further instruction. He handed Paige an explanatory booklet on the best meditation practices, congratulated them, and left the sisters to themselves. They needed time alone.

Rose ran her fingers over the curling designs of Paige’s pendant. “We’re going to be heroes, Paige.”

“Holy ones,” Paige reminded her. “I need to do a lot of work. I promised to help you become a better person, but I don’t think I’m very good myself.” That was as close to an apology as she’d ever give Rose for that night.

They were silent together for a long time. Paige’s knees were sore from kneeling on the hospital floor, but she didn’t mind. She held her sister’s hands in hers, and reflected on their new purpose.


	3. And They Grew Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this story has gotten out of hand. Every chapter, I think: "The next one will be the last one!". The main phases of this story will be Rose & Paige's childhood, their adolescence, their journey to the Resistance, and Paige's death. I think there will be two chapters after this one, but I'm not sure.

Something had permanently changed in Rose ever since her return from the Forest. She was slightly jumpier than she was before. On some nights, Paige woke up to find the door to her room ajar, painting a stripe of light across her tired eyes and her little sister curled around her. That was all well and good when Rose was ten or so, but as the children grew, two bodies in a narrow bed was sometimes too much. And Paige was gradually coming to value her privacy. The sisters did carry two halves of the same pendant, but they were most certainly not two halves of the same body or soul.

“I had bad dreams,” Rose would apologetically whisper to her. “Can I please stay in your bed? I promise I won’t kick.”

“You’re _twelve,”_ Paige grumbled. “The dark won’t hurt you.”

Rose sniffled and tightened her grip on Paige’s arms. “I’m not scared of the dark, Paige. I’m scared of what might happen during the day.”

“Oh.” Paige rolled onto her side to make room, and let Rose nestle against her. “You can stay. No snoring, no kicking.”

“I don’ snore…” Her little sister’s protest at a false accusation faded away as she dropped into sleep. This was their new bedtime routine, now that Paige was usually too exhausted to tell stories.

Despite Rose’s clingy behavior at home, she seemed more mature when they were outside of the house.

“Bit of a paradox,” said Auntie Vi as they stood outside of the school, waiting for Rose’s class to be released. Paige was fifteen and no longer went to school. She spent the days working in a munitions factory. They needed the money, and the implicit reputation of cooperation with the First Order. The conditions were far from ideal or even safe, but as Auntie Vi told her repeatedly, at least it wasn’t a mine.

“What, Auntie?”

“Rose is bolder and more frightened at the same time. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was just part of growing up. She used to scuttle off with an armful of books when she had spare time. Now she won’t leave either of us alone.” Auntie Vi sighed. “I should be grateful that she is taking more of an interest in the people around her. But it’s too abrupt to be a normal personality change.”

Paige set her mouth in a grim line. “She knows things we don’t, Auntie. I think that’s why.”

They stared ahead at the roiling mass of schoolchildren behind the gates, a shoal of navy-blue uniformed fish trapped inside a net. “That would explain things,” Auntie replied after a long silence. “When I asked the Souls my question, I didn’t stop and wonder if I really wanted to know the answer.”

Paige stared at her wrinkled, outwardly respectable and dull great-aunt in shock. “You went to the Forest?”

Vi Tico chuckled. “Yes, I did. At noon. Alone. I only asked one question.”

“What did you ask them?”

The older woman blinked back a tear. “The answer they gave me brought me no joy, and I doubt that knowing which question gave me such an answer will bring you any, either. The things the Souls told me would come to pass happened long before you and Rose were born.”

“Oh.” Paige pulled out her datapad and tried to nonchalantly lean against a wall. Seconds later, Rose broke away from her ranks and dashed over to them with enthusiasm more befitting a five-year-old than a girl of twelve. She enveloped Auntie Vi in a hug and tried to do the same to Paige, who stepped away (hugs in public are undignified when you are fifteen and your little sister is acting like she’d not seen you in weeks, like every minute she spent with you was some kind of expensive, sunny vacation).

“We learned about ions today!” Rose gushed. “Cations are the ones with a positive charge, and anions are the negative ones that try to grab them. That’s why salt crystals are so strong, you can’t easily break them with a hammer, but if you put them in water, they’ll diss…disas…dissociate because of the partial positive charge on the water.”

“Is that why you’re acting like an anion today?”, Paige asked. “You’re just as grabby as one.” This could have been playful banter, but for her tone. Auntie Vi shot her a look.

“No,” Rose grumbled, and inspected the ground and her shiny black school shoes, diametrically opposed to Paige’s scuffed work boots. They did not talk during the walk home.

After Rose changed out of her school uniform and angrily devoured a sandwich, she left for her lesson at the Temple. It was a shorter walk to the Temple than to school, and the route ran through territory that Auntie Vi considered mostly safe, so she walked alone, stomping over the concrete.

Brother Sando was waiting for her in the atrium, as always. Light would have shone down on them through the panes of glass in the roof, putting all the congregants in the right frame of mind for contemplating the sacrifices of the Souls, sunrises and sunsets, and the ties that bound all life on Hays Minor. Times being what they were, the skylights were covered with cheap boards painted black. Lighting was provided by fluorescent strips. Rose scowled at this evidence of the profane marring the sacred.

“Angry?” he asked. There was no accusation in his voice. Denial would be counterproductive.

“Yes,” she growled. “I am.”

They walked through the sanctuary and out to the courtyard. Brother Sando pulled out a pair of cushions, and Rose knelt. He stopped her and motioned for her to sit normally.

“It’s useless to try to make the anger go away before asking yourself why it is there,” he told her. “So, what caused it? If you do not know that, what was happening before it started?”

Rose thought before starting her weekly lessons that Brother Sando would be like the other priests and priestesses at the Temple, nothing but an incense-swinger and reciter of dull, vague sermons. After all, he gave no other indications when he recited the initiation blessings. Later, she learned that such ceremonies were rare; in fact, that was his first solo performance of the rite in twenty years of practice after going through it as a boy. Brother Sando was not what she’d expected. He seemed less like a priest and more like a doctor who specialized in minds.

She lowered her eyebrows. What had started it? Some days she felt an all-consuming rage because her body seemed intent on destroying her with cramps, the sun rose, and Auntie Vi chewed her toast too loudly. Other days she was drowning in a cold loathing of the First Order, its greasy men and women with ridiculous fake Core accents, and all that it stood for and did to her planet.

“Paige was teasing me after school,” she said. “I was being too clingy. I guess I deserved it.”

“And you were clingy because…” Brother Sando would not let her off easily.

“I missed her. I love her. Even when she’s annoying.”

“Yet, she might find this behavior possessive, or overbearing. Paige is trying to become her own person. I’m sure she loves you, but at her age she’s looking to define herself in terms beyond Vi Tico’s great-niece, or Rose Tico’s sister.”

“I know.” She glared at the bushes that lined the courtyard walls, dormant and twiggy in early spring. They were ugly right now.

“Have you talked to her about this?”

“No. Not yet. I know what she’ll say. Paige will apologize for being mean but tell me I’m too old to hug her after school in front of everyone anymore. I’ll say I accept the apology, and I’ll ask before I give her hugs.”

“But you’re still angry,” Brother Sando stated.

“Yes.”

“At your sister, at yourself, or at a society that dictates how we express our emotions?”

“All of it! And the kriffing First Order too. Paige has been crankier since she started work at that stupid factory of theirs.”

“Language,” he cautioned. But she wanted to fight.

“‘Kriff’ isn’t even one of our swear words!” she argued. “It’s from Basic, and we learn that as a second language in school.”

“It’s not the syllables that matter. It’s the intention,” he said. “Love and hatred are powerful things. Some would say that they are dual aspects of the same passion. True, strong love or hatred can be a weapon, or your own destruction.”

“I hate the First Order,” Rose said. “But I can’t kill them all with my feelings.”

Brother Sando smiled. “There’s more to life than hating things, Rose. You’re too young to kill, and intense hatred is dangerous for people like us. But you love strongly. You can use that.”

A fat, purple nectar-beetle whizzed over them, crossing the courtyard to alight in the bushes, its carapace shining as bright as polished Haysian Smelt in the fading light of the afternoon. “That beetle is here early,” Rose remarked. “The black sugar-trumpets aren’t even budding yet. I’m surprised that one has hatched.”

They watched it crawl across the branches in the thin strip of garden, teetering like an overladen trolley on a skinny rail. It was likely searching for opened flowers but found a bush bare even of leaves. “That is true,” the priest said, “but you’re changing the subject before we’ve properly finished. So, how do you plan to use your emotions for good? The few Jedi who visited our planet long ago scoffed at us and said that emotion was weakness, a path to the Dark Side. A philosophical construct that has no objective proof of existence, that was created to compartmentalize good and evil. And now, their order has self-destructed and vanished from the Galaxy, yet we are still here. Tell me, how do you plan to harness your emotions?”

Rose snorted. “I can’t hug the First Order to death. I’ll just have to wait until I grow up to join the Resistance.”

“It is a great gift to look to the future,” Brother Sando told her, brushing flecks of the ever-present soot off his robes. “You are truly strong in that regard, and it saddens me to see a child like yourself learning about even more destruction and hatred than we witness in the present.”

She wasn’t sure if this was meant to caution or placate her. Great. Another “You’re so special, live up to your potential!” talk from a well-meaning adult. It was worse than other punishments she’d endured or imagined because she suspected the specialness was a kind lie. Rose got this from her Auntie more times than she could count when she misbehaved. She’d heard variations of it from her teachers when the pages of her text blurred, the world went bright, and the teacher’s voice was drowned out by things only Rose could hear.

At times like these, she’d focus on one point in the room until the world came back like Brother Sando taught her to, or if the visions were faint enough, she’d cover her Civics notes in pencil sketches depicting them. It helped to have an image that would stay still; something she could fix with a few judicious swipes of an eraser and bold lines of graphite. Only a couple of teachers had seen her necklace, and they pitied her enough not to tell anyone else. For all the rest, Rose was a talented but unfocused student who frequently wasted her time in class and disrespected her lecturers by staring at some spot just to the right of their faces wearing an expression of terror or putting frankly disturbing doodles in place of answers on her Basic worksheets. She never thought she’d hear this lecture from Brother Sando, the man who knew what went on behind her blank eyes, beneath the thin skin of the paper.

She opened her mouth to snap at him, but he spoke first. “You are talented at looking to the future, but you are there too much. Focus on what you love, right here, right now. If you do that, your hatred will no longer consume you, and the things you hate will take care of themselves.”


End file.
